


hold my heart (and pull my strings)

by nicole_writes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: All the Blue Lions are here, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, For Andi because I was told to stop writing sads, In which Sylvain can see the strings that connect people together, Platonic Soulmates, Red String of Fate, Soulmates, canon adjacent, soulmate au kind of, strings of fate au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25797553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicole_writes/pseuds/nicole_writes
Summary: Sylvain’s first string is not to his mother or his father or even his brother. His first string is to Felix Fraldarius, Glenn’s little brother. Their string is purple and Sylvain stares at it like an idiot as it fades into view on his hands. It’s tied around the fourth finger of his right hand and it feels like a promise.- In which Sylvain can see the strings that connect people together.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Dorothea Arnault & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Sylvain Jose Gautier & Lysithea von Ordelia, Sylvain Jose Gautier & My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 32
Kudos: 90





	hold my heart (and pull my strings)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anditiucs13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anditiucs13/gifts).



> For the lovely Andi in the Sylvgrid Discord (join us here -> https://discord.gg/s6zYwbu) who has told me I wrote too many sads recently, so I tried to write her something lighter and it got wildly out of hands (7K??????? WHERE DID THIS COME FROM WHAT THE HELL)
> 
> anyways, no one can claim I'm a complete angst monster any more (not that I ever was in the first place, geez people)
> 
> This fic is SFAndi (except for one like, tiny, tiny bit which I know she'll call me out on later, but it's fine...)

Since he could remember, Sylvain could see the strings linking people together. They can be platonic or romantic or familial. They’re usually brightly coloured and vibrant. The strings connect people by their hands. One end of the string loops around one person’s finger and then it trails off across the world to the other person who holds the string. 

His mother has one string that stretches off to god-knows-where but his father’s hands are empty. Miklan, too, has bare hands. Sylvain is four when he finally asks his father what the colourful lines are. He is told to go away and that they are not important. 

Sylvain is tested for a Crest the next day. 

His hopes of a string with Miklan die with the hatred that blossoms on his brother’s face. 

* * *

Sylvain’s first string is not to his mother or his father or even his brother. His first string is to Felix Fraldarius, Glenn’s little brother. Their string is purple and Sylvain stares at it like an idiot as it fades into view on his hands. It’s tied around the fourth finger of his right hand and it feels like a promise. 

The string feels both physical and not and it’s pure curiosity that has him reach out and tug on it. His hand wraps around the air and he pulls. Nearby, Felix stumbles and trips, falling onto his butt. Glenn gapes at his brother in the dirt of the Fraldarius training pit and Sylvain stares at his hands like it’s the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to him. 

“Sylvain?” a small voice asks. “What are you doing?”

He turns and sees Ingrid Galatea, youngest and only Crested child of Count Galatea. She has loose, curly blonde hair and wide innocent green eyes. Sylvain glances at her hands. Ingrid has five strings, three of which belong to her older brothers. She has a bright blue string that leads off into the distance towards the capital which Sylvain thinks goes to Dimitri, Crown Prince of the Kingdom. Her last string is amber coloured and leads straight to Glenn Fraldarius. 

There’s a bright red string between the Fraldarius brothers that bunches up as Glenn pulls Felix to his feet. Glenn has three more strings: one to each of his parents and one for Dimitri. Felix just has Sylvain’s string. 

Their string is bright purple and steady in his field of view unlike both of Dimitri’s strings to Glenn and Ingrid which seem to blink in and out of view. Sylvain touches the tiny bow of his string and smiles to himself before he shakes his head at the young Ingrid. 

“Nothing,” he says. “It’s nothing.”

* * *

After the Tragedy of Duscur, Sylvain learns the truth of what happens when the person on the other end of your string dies. Dimitri returns with two strings curled around the bases of his fingers like fine, invisible rings: the gold one that had gone to his father and the orange one that had gone to Glenn. He also comes back with a white string that is just barely flickering between him and the boy from Duscur, Dedue. 

Sylvain feels a tug on his purple string and he follows it to Fraldarius. Felix needs him and Rodrigue can’t seem to connect to his son, even though they now bear matching bands for the strings that should still lead to Glenn. Sylvain follows the purple string through the Fraldarius Estate until he finds Felix holed up in Glenn’s room. 

Sylvain hadn’t gotten a string with Ingrid ( _yet, he tells himself_ ) but he remembers that she had one to Glenn too, so his next stop is Castle Galatea. Ingrid tries to ice him out, but Sylvain has no band on his finger and an awful lot of stubbornness to contend with. Eventually, her door opens and he takes her into his arms and just holds her tightly. 

For just a second, he thinks he sees a flicker of something on his hands, but then it fades to nothing again and he focuses back on comforting Ingrid. 

* * *

Two weeks after Glenn dies, Dimitri and Felix get a string. It’s the same shade of navy as Glenn’s hair and Sylvain watches it pulse brightly from Dimitri’s end and fade until it’s almost blurry on Felix’s. It gets muddled somewhere in the middle and it stays like that for years. Dimitri and Dedue’s white string brightens and Ingrid and Dimitri’s blue string stays steady. 

Sylvain stares at his own hands and the purple string tied around his finger. He does not get strings to Ingrid or to Dimitri and he does not lose his string with Felix. He sticks with one until he gets to Garreg Mach.

* * *

At the Academy, the strings are a mess. Hubert and Edelgard have one. Linhardt and Caspar have a green one. Ignatz and Raphael’s is yellow. Seteth and Flayn’s is as green as their hair. Catherine and Shamir’s is dark purple and Hanneman and Manuela’s is dark teal. Annette and Mercedes’s is bright yellow. 

The Professor, Byleth, has just the one gold string that goes to her father. Her hands flicker with so many colours that it gives him a headache sometimes. 

Sylvain is staring at Byleth in the dining hall one night, just eyeing her hands to see if that suspicious blast of colour will reappear when Lysithea drops into the seat across from him, scowling. Sylvain immediately redirects his attention and smiles pleasantly at the mage. 

“Cut your crap,” she grumbles. “You see them too, don’t you?” Sylvain blinks. Lysithea points to his hand. “Felix, right?”

Sylvain stares at his string for a minute before his eyes jump to Lysithea’s hands. Her fingers are decorated with faded bands that blink in and out of view and Sylvain’s heart jumps into his throat. She has one string, a light blue one, that trails towards Claude, her house leader and a pink one that flickers in and out of view. 

“I didn’t know anyone else could see them,” Sylvain admits. 

Lysithea frowns and picks at her dinner. “Your staring is really obvious.” She takes a bite of chicken. 

Sylvain laughs. “And here I thought you didn’t like me, Lysithea.”

She narrows her eyes and points her fork at him. “Shush.”

Their string appears three days later: a light lilac loop tied around Sylvain’s left middle finger. He treasures it.

* * *

Sylvain’s third string is to Annette. It’s as orange as her hair and it comes after he stays up almost all night helping her study for her mage certification exam. Ingrid gives him a weird look the next day when he shows up to class with his hair a complete mess and huge dark circles under his eyes. He can’t help but grin at Annette and the string tying them together as she dances around the room with Mercedes, celebrating passing her exam. 

“What’s with you, Mr. Smiley?” Ingrid asks as she takes her seat next to him. 

“Annette looks happy, that’s all,” Sylvain replies. 

Ingrid rolls her eyes and pulls her books out of her backpack. She still has her string to Dimitri and she and Felix have one now too, a bright red one that is very reminiscent of the string that Felix had shared with his brother. Ingrid also has one to Mercedes that’s a lovely dusty rose colour. 

Dedue and Ashe have gained a string and so have Ashe and Annette. Mercedes has one to Annette of course, but now there’s a light red one between her and Dimitri too that’s the same colour as the stitching on Dimitri’s uniform cuff. 

Sylvain smiles like an idiot for the rest of the class period and Ingrid just rolls her eyes at him like he’s stupid, which he kind of is. 

* * *

Ashe loses his string to his adoptive father and Sylvain feels bad. The next day, Ashe and Mercedes gain a string and Byleth gets her first string to a student as a dusty yellow string floats between her and Ashe. 

Sylvain gets his fourth string that same day when Byleth and Hanneman pair Sylvain and Hilda together to clean the library and they do more fooling around than cleaning. Their string is bright pink and it looks quite funny next to Annette’s string on Sylvain’s hands. In fact, Hilda and Claude’s string is white, but the rest of Hilda’s strings are all various shades of pink which is incredibly fitting. 

Lysithea gives them a weird look when she arrives to take over on library duty with Leonie. Sylvain just grins and wiggles his fingers at her as he leaves. Lysithea sticks her tongue out and Hilda raises an eyebrow at the weird interaction. Sylvain just laughs. 

* * *

After the professor gets the weird sword from the tomb, Sylvain gets his string with Dedue. It’s kind of a weird occurrence when it blinks into view, dark teal, over dinner and Sylvain almost chokes on his food. He gets weird looks from Dimitri and Dedue, but Sylvain is still staring at the string like a fool. 

He has five now: Felix, Lysithea, Annette, Hilda, and Dedue. He still doesn’t have strings with Dimitri or Ingrid and at this point, he’s not sure he’ll ever get them. 

There’s a mysterious dark pink string around Dimitri’s pinky finger that Sylvain had never quite figured out as a kid, but when he sees it trail towards Edelgard during dinner that night, he can’t help but gape so he shoves food in his mouth to keep it closed. The string is already fuzzy on Dimitri’s hand, but it’s so faded on Edelgard’s it nearly doesn’t exist. 

When no one is watching, Sylvain flicks the string and watches both Dimitri and Edelgard’s hands jerk. Both Royals frown and stare at their uncooperative limbs and Sylvain doesn’t really know what to say. 

* * *

Miklan dies as he lived: a bitter son of a bitch with no strings. Unlike when Felix lost a brother, Sylvain does not lose a string because he had never had one with his brother in the first place. 

He does leave the battle with an additional string: a light pink one that connects him and Mercedes. 

Sylvain asks her to tea the next day because she’s not Ingrid or Dimitri or Felix who ask too many questions. Instead, she’s quiet and comforting and their string feels warm around his pinky finger as she tells him more about her upbringing in the Empire. 

* * *

Four days later, Sylvain gets the worst string he could have ever imagined. His and Lorenz’s string is gold and annoyingly vibrant as it loops around his index finger. It’s the first string that Sylvain actively tries to cut. Of course, the string just bounces incorporeally around the blade that he takes to it. 

His and Hilda’s string fades a little, but his and Mercedes’s gets brighter. He gets a light blue one with Marianne that likes to come and go, but it blinks brighter whenever she gives him one of her rarer smiles. 

Sylvain still has no strings to Ingrid or Dimitri. They both have strings to almost every Blue Lion and Ingrid even gets one to Dorothea that’s a nice shade of very pale green. It clashes with the mostly dark-toned strings on Dorothea’s hands, but Sylvain does catch Dorothea staring at it one day and he starts to wonder. 

* * *

After Flayn joins the Blue Lions and after the mock battle when she heals a cut on his arm with a Heal spell, Sylvain gets yet another string. His hands are turning into a mess of colour, but it warms his heart. His and Flayn’s string is bright blue like the sky even if Flayn still insists on avoiding him because of his relationship. 

He recounts the story to Ingrid later and she laughs at him before sweeping his feet out with the tip of her lance and knocking him flat on his back while they’re training. Felix calls them both stupid and Dimitri just shakes his head fondly at all three of them. 

As Ingrid helps him up, Sylvain wonders what colour their string might be if it ever appeared. 

* * *

At the ball, Ingrid and Claude get a string which makes him frown. It’s brown with golden flecks and he stares at it until Hilda drags him onto the dance floor. Sylvain is three steps into the dance with Hilda when his hand slips off her shoulder of its own accord. Sylvain’s brows knit and he stares at the maroon string looping around his right index finger. 

The string leads out the balcony doors towards the fishing hole. 

He finishes his dance with Hilda and makes his way out there. He’s not surprised to see Dorothea sitting on the railing at the other end of her string. She frowns when she sees him and flicks the string. A tingle goes up Sylvain’s arm and he gives it a gentle tug in return. 

“God, I was hoping I was wrong about that,” Dorothea grumbles. “Of course you can see them.”

Sylvain laughs. Dorothea has her string with Ingrid and then one for Petra in the same colour as Petra’s hair and one for Linhardt that’s a deep blue. Hers and Manuela’s is dark silver. She has two new strings tonight though: the maroon one leading to him and a bright orange one. 

He points to it. “Who’s that for?”

Dorothea wrinkles her nose. “Who do you think?”

Sylvain laughs. It’s the same colour as Ferdinand’s hair which is hilariously fitting. “How did that happen?”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll be damned if I knew.” Dorothea studies his hands. “Annette, Lysithea, Marianne, Felix, Mercedes, Dedue, Hilda, Lorenz, Flayn,” she lists off. “Aren’t you popular, but,” she frowns. “No Ingrid? No Dimitri?”

Sylvain shrugs. “I don’t know. Never got them when we were kids, never got them now.”

Dorothea frowns. “Does it worry you?”

He tugs on their string and Dorothea’s hand twitches. “Not yet.”

* * *

Sometimes he has a string to Bernadetta when he thinks about her incredible stories. Sometimes he has a string to Leonie when they ride horses together. Neither of them is particularly vibrant, but they flicker in and out. 

* * *

Byleth’s gold string bands when her father dies and the Blue Lions embrace on a field in the rain and mud. Byleth’s hands flash with a mess of colour again, but her strings don’t appear, leaving her with her string to Ashe and the band now twisting around her finger. 

Annette and Dedue’s string is new and so is Felix and Mercedes’s, but Sylvain sticks with the ones he already has. 

Byleth, eyes darkened with tears, traces the path of the strings across the students and Sylvain stares, wondering. 

He asks Lysithea later if she thinks that Byleth can see the strings. Lysithea pauses and fidgets with hers and Marianne’s icy blue string. 

“I don’t know,” she says. “I think she sees a lot, but I don’t know.”

* * *

Byleth’s hands are exploding with colour the moment she cuts her way back into the world. She has blindingly bright strings to each of the Blue Lions and Sylvain can do nothing but stare at the wildly tangled threads coming off of the professor’s hands, including a new bright green band that doesn’t make any sense. 

Later, Sylvain is able to untangle them enough to see that Dimitri’s string is blue, Ingrid’s is silver, Felix’s is black, Dedue’s is dark green, Mercedes’s is dark blue, Annette’s is dark pink, and his is a rusty red colour. Sylvain tugs on it and Byleth looks towards him. She gives him a faint smile and Sylvain can’t help his own smile in return. 

“She can see them,” he tells Dorothea and Lysithea later. He doesn’t mention that Byleth has more strings than any person Sylvain has ever seen in his entire life. 

* * *

Dimitri and Edelgard’s string blazes on Dimitri’s end when Edelgard starts the war. Felix and Dimitri’s string grows so faded it nearly doesn’t exist. Dedue and Mercedes and Annette and Ingrid and Ashe’s strings all fade until they only flicker in and out of existence on Dimitri’s hands. Only Byleth’s sapphire blue string and Edelgard’s dark pink strings are always visible on Dimitri’s hands. 

* * *

Byleth dies when the Empire attacks Garreg Mach. No one seems sure, but Sylvain is sure. His red string bands and so does everyone else’s string to the professor. Of course, there’s no way that he can actually explain this to each other, so he’s stuck staring at his hands while everyone else is digging through rubble looking for Byleth. 

Only Dimitri’s string to the professor takes a little longer than the others to band, but Sylvain doesn’t question it. They don’t really have the option to as it stands. 

When it’s time to return home, Sylvain gives each of his strings a gentle tug. His and Bernie’s is already so faded it barely moves when he runs his finger along it. Flayn’s fades a bit too, as does Leonie’s, but at least he can still feel those. 

He and Felix and Ingrid ride for their territories together. They swing through Galatea first and then Felix and Sylvain will head north to Fraldarius before Sylvain finishes his journey to Gautier alone. 

Ingrid and Felix’s string is pulled taught and just as bright as ever. His and Felix’s hangs a bit more loosely but is still just as bright as it was when they were kids. He still does not get a string to Ingrid even as he hugs her goodbye at the edge of Galatea territory when she tells him to write to her. 

Their string would have been green, Sylvain decides, as he rides for his home.

* * *

Lorenz’s string is the first one that Sylvain loses entirely. It’s there one day, bright and annoying as always, and then it is gone the next day. He stares at his index finger. Marianne’s flickering blue string is there, but Lorenz’s is just completely gone. He can’t feel it at all anymore. 

Leonie’s is next to go because he doesn’t write to her. Bernie’s goes next and one day, Marianne’s stops flickering and disappears entirely. Hilda’s stays for the first year, but just barely: a glimmer of pink on his hand when he least expects it. 

Annette’s and Dedue’s and Mercedes’s all fade a little, so Sylvain writes them letters. They brighten while he writes the letters and when he reads the replies he gets back from Annette and Mercedes, but his and Dedue’s just continues to fade. 

Lysithea and Dorothea’s strings stay, bright as ever, as does Felix’s. His red band for the professor doesn’t go anywhere either. 

One day, about a year into the war, Sylvain gets a bad feeling. He steals a letter off the top of his father’s desk and the contents of it nearly make him sick. He rides for Fraldarius later that evening. 

Rodrigue and Gilbert are surprised to see him, but they let him follow his purple string to the training grounds where he finds Felix. Felix has already cut four training dummies to shreds and he nearly takes Sylvain’s head off when he calls out to him. 

Felix’s strings to Lysithea and Bernadetta and Leonie are gone. His strings to Ashe and Mercedes are faded and he had never received one with Annette or Dedue. Ingrid’s string is still bright which reassures Sylvain. Dimitri’s string, on the other hand, is puzzling. 

It curls around Felix’s finger and stretches off into the distance, shifting on its own like it can’t decide whether Dimitri is alive or dead. It’s blurred and faded and barely even visible on Felix’s hand, but it gives Sylvain hope. If the string hasn’t banded, then Dimitri isn’t dead. He hopes it’s that simple. 

Sylvain spends a week in Fraldarius nurturing his and Felix’s string before he follows Felix’s red string south to Galatea where he finds Ingrid going stir crazy. She still has Dimitri’s string too, but hers is even more faded than it used to be. Ingrid and Ignatz’s string is gone, as are Bernadetta and Claude’s, but she keeps Mercedes and Annette and Dorothea and Ashe’s. 

The string that belongs to her oldest brother bands while he’s visiting and Sylvain can only watch in horror. He waits three days before the letter arrives and then he just opens his arms and lets Ingrid fall into him when she cries. They fall asleep in the parlour together and Sylvain will never forget the dirty look that Count Galatea gives him the next morning. 

Sylvain wants to ask him why he has strings for Ingrid’s brothers but not with Ingrid, but of course, that wouldn’t mean anything to him. Instead, he helps Ingrid muck the stables and spars with her and keeps her mind off all the terrible things going on. 

Ingrid hugs him goodbye when he leaves and she smells like dirt and pine and home to him. She tells him not to do anything stupid and get killed and Sylvain wishes again that they had a string so that she could be sure that she would be the first to know. 

* * *

Over five years, Sylvain loses Dedue’s string and Hilda’s string and even Flayn’s string. His and Dorothea’s string disappears for three days, but then it comes right back and he relaxes. Annette’s and Mercedes’s strings both fade, but never completely disappear. Sylvain makes sure to make enough regular visits to Felix whenever he’s not at the Sreng border that the purple string stays bright and blazing on his hand. 

It’s one week before he and Ingrid and Felix have agreed to meet to head back to the monastery for the Millennium Festival when he watches the impossible occur. 

The red string banded around his middle finger unwinds slowly and creeps across the room and straight through the wall in a southwest direction. Sylvain stares. It’s not possible. The string had banded and that means that the professor had died. Unless it doesn’t. 

Ingrid’s silver string is a string again and so is Felix’s black one. Sylvain’s heart pounds in his chest. 

As they ride for Garreg Mach, he notices that the black and blue strings on Felix’s hands and the silver and blue ones on Ingrid’s seem to be pointing in the same direction. As they step into the ruins surrounding the monastery in the dead of night, the strings flare up. 

The professor is alive and her strings brighten with colour and reel in the Blue Lions as they surround her and Dimitri. Sylvain’s strings to Annette and Mercedes brighten, but his string to Dedue does not return because Dedue has not returned. 

Dimitri’s hands are a mess: cut up and scarred and marked with only two real strings. He has Byleth’s blue string and Edelgard’s. The strings to the other Lions shimmer like they can’t decide whether or not to exist, but it’s the blinding brightness of both Glenn and Lambert’s bands that make Sylvain frown. 

* * *

Sylvain makes himself busy in the stables. A few of the others have returned to join them, Dorothea and Lysithea amongst them, but none of the three of them have said anything about what strings are new and which ones are missing. Sylvain is grooming his horse when Ingrid finds him, her arms crossed and her face conflicted. 

“Did you know the professor was alive?” she asks him suddenly. 

Sylvain’s hand freezes mid-brushstroke and Ingrid stares. He tries to backpedal. “Of course not.”

She very obviously doesn’t believe him. “Did you know Dimitri would be here?” she asks next. 

“No,” Sylvain says, lying through his teeth. He had known but there was no logical way for him to explain how he had known. 

Ingrid looks disappointed in him, but she just picks up a curry comb and heads towards the pegasi, not saying anything else. Sylvain wishes that they had a string he could tug on to pull her back to him, but he and Ingrid have never gotten a string. 

* * *

The Blue Lions regain some of their strings and their strings to Dimitri start to brighten, but Dimitri’s hands stay muddled and only equipped with his two bands and two strings. Sylvain sees his and Marianne’s string blink back briefly, but it doesn’t stay long. Marianne still has Hilda’s though, which at least reassures Sylvain that Hilda is alive even though he lost her string. 

He’s having tea in the garden with Mercedes and Annette one day when he notices that the dark green string on Mercedes’s hand is still present. It makes him pause. It is Dedue’s string and, if Dimitri is correct, Dedue is dead. But, Mercedes’s string is still present and though it’s faded, it’s not banded. 

Sylvain’s heart skips in his chest. 

* * *

Sylvain wakes up one night to a terrible tugging sensation on his hand. On instinct alone, he follows his purple string to the training grounds. Felix is there, as he knew he would be, beating the shit out of a training dummy.  
  
Felix’s hands are a mess with his strings. His and Ingrid’s string is bright as ever and he has a new teal one that goes to Annette that appeared just after the battle in Ailell. There is Byleth’s string and Mercedes’s string and two that flicker in and out that are probably Lysithea’s and Dorothea’s. The green one is Ashe’s, but it’s not steady either. It’s the amber one that gets Sylvain’s attention. 

The string is tied between Felix and his father and the way that Felix is cutting up the dummy, he seems to know that there is something driving him to feel this way after seeing his father even if he couldn’t actually see the strings himself. 

Sylvain gives a short tug to the purple string and Felix spins towards him, brandishing his sword. He looks at his hands and looks at Sylvain, narrowing his eyes. 

“Can you see them too?” he growls. 

Sylvain stares. “What?”

“Dorothea told me I couldn’t give up on Dimitri. Lysithea said that I’ll never shed Glenn completely. They both said something about fate tying it all together.”

Sylvain looks at the thread tying him and Felix together and tucks his hands into his pockets.

“I think it’s just a metaphor,” he replies. 

* * *

Dedue’s string blinks back into existence, tied right below his new string to Ashe, on Sylvain’s hands as they ride towards Myrddin. He grins to himself like an idiot and Ingrid tells him that he looks weird. 

“I have a good feeling about this,” he says to her. 

She raises an eyebrow and tugs her helmet over her short blond hair. “Well, don’t do anything stupid.”

He grins at her. “Won’t you be there to protect me?”

Ingrid’s smile slips and he wonders if he has overstepped. “Don’t make me need to be,” she says and then she rides away from him, kicking her heels into the flank of her pegasus. He watches her fly away from the back of his steed. 

He feels something tug in his chest as he swallows down his next words. 

_Stay close to me_ , he wants to say, but she’s already gone. 

* * *

Dedue returns and his string blazes white back into place on Dimitri’s hands and Dimitri stares at his hands like a lost man. Sylvain wonders if he can see it: see the visceral and glowing effect that the Duscuran man has on the fallen prince. 

Ingrid limps over to him after the battle, supported by Felix, and Sylvain’s vision tunnels to the nasty gash on her leg, obviously from the bridge’s ballista. 

“It’s been looked at,” Ingrid promises. 

Sylvain frowns. She could have died from a wound like that if she had fallen from her pegasus. She could have died and he has no string that would have told him until the battle was already over. He takes her weight from Felix without thinking and Felix slips away towards Annette, dragging Sylvain and Ingrid’s strings with him. 

“Stay close to me,” he says this time. 

She doesn’t argue, but she does give him an odd look. 

* * *

Sylvain does not get his string back with Lorenz. He doesn’t gain a band either, because the professor spares Lorenz and the Gloucester noble joins them after the bridge of Myrddin. Sylvain is not concerned with Lorenz because he follows his maroon string to the highest point in the monastery: the Star Garden by Lady Rhea’s quarters. 

He takes Dorothea’s hands without prompting and covers them with his own so that she doesn’t have to look at the newly banded orange string curling around her ring finger as a painful reminder. 

“I’ve never had a band before,” she says, her voice wavering. 

Sylvain doesn’t know what to say. He’s not Lysithea with her flickering bands for the siblings she had lost. His only band, to Byleth, has extended back to a glowing string. He just squeezes her hands again and gently taps her strings to Felix, Ingrid, and himself. 

“We’re here for you,” he says. 

The three strings are vibrant enough that it’s the truth. Dorothea leans her head on his shoulder and Sylvain stays with her as long as she needs him. 

* * *

Dimitri and Felix both gain a band at Gronder. Rodrigue dies for Dimitri and Sylvain watches the moment that Dimitri’s mind shatters and his hands blaze with colour as his strings return. Glenn and Lambert and Rodrigue’s bands don’t get any fainter, but Ingrid’s string and Felix’s string and Mercedes’s string and Annette’s string and Ashe’s string all glow with an intensity that matches Dedue and Byleth’s. 

Sylvain watches as an ashy grey string winds around his left pinky and extends slowly to Dimitri, tying the two together. It doesn’t feel new, like many strings often do, and Sylvain wonders if maybe it had been there all along and he just hadn’t been able to see it. 

He tests it later, tugging on it in a war meeting. Dimitri’s hand slips, making a strange mark in ink on the map of the outskirts of Fhirdiad. Sylvain grins to himself. The string is real. 

Finally, he has the connection to his friend that he was always wondering why he never had in the first place. 

He steals a glance at Ingrid as she gives her report to Dimitri. He does not know why they do not have a string even for all the times she has cleaned up after him and all the times that he has held her in his arms. 

* * *

They retake Fhirdiad and Dimitri and Felix’s string is restored to the bright glory it once held when they were children. Felix and Ingrid’s string flares. Dimitri and Ingrid’s string glows. Sylvain’s strings to Felix and Dimitri shimmer. 

He still has no string to Ingrid even as he carries her back to her quarters after a few too many glasses of wine and presses and instinctual kiss to her forehead. 

* * *

The war takes them to Derdriu and Hilda’s string comes blazing back onto his hands with a passion as she gives him a huge hug at the end of the fight. They’re both sweaty and covered in blood, but Hilda is bubblegum pink, as always, with her vibrant mess of pink-toned strings. Sylvain laughs as the string reappears and he notices later that Lysithea gives him a weird look. He flicks their violet string in response. 

At the party Claude throws in their honour that night, Claude and Ingrid’s string flickers back and Sylvain bites back a wave of jealousy he’s not expecting, but Claude doesn’t seem too concerned, focussing instead on the shining yellow string that ties him to the professor. Sylvain had never noticed it before, but it seems natural on the professor’s hands as if it has always been there. 

Sylvain brings Ingrid a glass of wine and she shoves his shoulder, laughing at him. She takes the glass and he manages to talk her into one dance. 

“Stay close to me,” he says to her quietly as he puts a hand on her waist. 

She rolls her eyes and steps on his toe intentionally. “Of course,” she replies. 

While they dance, her other strings fade and Sylvain’s heart aches. He wants a string with Ingrid more badly than he’s ever wanted anything in his whole life. He holds onto her like he’s going to lose her. 

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you stumble this much in a dance,” she says to him quietly as she presses the tips of her shoes together to correct one of his missteps. 

“No, must be because of you,” he teases back. 

She rolls her eyes again, but she does smile at him. “Are you still slacking on your training as much as you were?”

He tightens his grip on her, pulling her just the tiniest bit closer. “Maybe I’m being stupid, but I think we work really well together.”

Her smile is faint, but it seems amused enough that he knows he hasn’t completely misstepped. He guides her into a turn, holding her by one hand. She spins under his arm with elegance and grace that she constantly denies having and Sylvain watches their hands, hoping, desperately, that he’ll see a string link their fingers together. 

* * *

Byleth finds him in the Knight’s Hall the day after he completely humiliates himself by running away from Ingrid after calling her beautiful. He doesn’t notice her at first, but then there’s a tug on his hand and he knocks over a chess piece. He looks up and sees that her hand is curled around the red string that ties them together. 

She has a small, self-satisfied smile on her face and Sylvain straightens in his seat.

“Professor?” he questions. He resists the urge to look at his hands and to stare at the string. 

“You see them,” she points out as she moves to sit next to him. 

Sylvain drops his gaze to her hands. They’re a complete mess of colour. He can pick out all the strings belonging to the Blue Lions students, but she also has a bright red one and a yellow one that glow with an intensity equal to only the glow of Dimitri’s string. The yellow one is Claude’s, so Sylvain can make a guess at who the red one belongs to. There’s the band for Jeralt and the mysterious green band that he has never been able to figure out. 

“How long have you been able to see them?” she asks, resituating the chess piece that he had knocked over. 

“Since I was born, I think,” Sylvain answers. “I’ve seen them for as long as I can remember.”

Byleth holds out her hands and he uncurls his fingers, hovering his palms over hers as she studies his strings. 

“Me, Dimitri, Felix, Dorothea, Hilda, Ashe, Dedue, Annette, Marianne, Lysithea, Flayn, Leonie, Bernadetta, Lorenz,” she lists. 

Sylvain stares at his own hands. All the strings he had lost: Lorenz, Marianne, Leonie, Flayn, and Bernadetta appear back in faint glimmers as Byleth touches them. They don’t stay, blinking away, as soon as she moves her hands away. Next, she reaches for his left ring finger which is the only one of his fingers to have never gained a string in the entire time that Sylvain has been gaining strings. 

She slides her finger through blank space. “And this one?”

Sylvain stares at her, lifting his gaze from the blank space that Byleth is touching. “There’s nothing there,” he argues. 

“Look again,” she urges. 

He looks down again and this time, he sees it. It’s a green string that’s such a familiar shade it makes his heart twist. Like Dimitri’s string, it feels like it has been there forever and he touches the bow where it ties onto his finger in absolute wonder. 

“Ingrid,” he says without even thinking.

* * *

His and Ingrid’s string is green.

* * *

Sylvain has not stopped staring at the string since Byleth had pointed it out to him. They march for Enbarr in two days and he can’t stop staring at the mysterious green string on his hands that he had never seen before. 

He pulls Lysithea aside and asks her about it. She tells him it has been there since at least the Academy Days, a week after the ball or so. Sylvain is dumbfounded and Lysithea just laughs at him, calling him a real idiot.

Dorothea confirms that it has been there for a while. She says that she thought he knew. She gives it a tug and wags her green string, the one that is a few shades lighter, and says she wonders what Ingrid would think now that they’re matching. 

Sylvain stares at her like an idiot over dinner because Ingrid is beautiful and he’s an idiot and _their string is green_. 

* * *

Felix grabs his arm just before they march on Enbarr and their purple string bounces between them. 

“No dying,” Felix says roughly. 

Sylvain steals a look at his friend’s hands. Annette’s string glows twice as vibrantly as any of his other strings. He smiles back at Felix, clapping his friend on the shoulder with his right hand. 

“Together or not at all,” he says brightly. 

Felix nods curtly and his eyes stray over Sylvain’s shoulder to Ingrid where she stands next to her pegasus speaking with Dimitri and the professor. 

“We have things to see through,” Felix continues. “You have things to do, Sylvain.”

Sylvain follows his gaze, tracing the three strings that he and Felix each have. Dark red and black for Byleth, navy and grey for Dimitri, bright red and green for Ingrid. Sylvain smiles. 

“Do I?”

“I’ll kill you myself if you don’t ask her to marry you,” Felix grumbles before he walks away.

Sylvain chuckles to himself.

* * *

Dimitri and Byleth emerge from the throne room with new bands on their fingers and a blue string that blazes so bright it’s almost blinding. Sylvain leans on the Lance of Ruin and pats his horse’s neck. 

He follows his green string to Ingrid where she is talking with Ashe and Annette. Instinct has him reaching up to tug on it. The hand holding Luín jerks and she almost hits Annette. Ingrid’s eyes go wide and she quickly apologizes to her friend before she turns, her brows knit until her eyes land on him. 

The way she stares at him for a moment makes him wonder for just a second if she can see the thread tying them together and see that it’s the same colour as her eyes and if she can see how desperately and stupidly he loves her. 

* * *

The war is over, but Sylvain’s green string is leading him to the training hall. He can hear the faint clanging of metal through the door and when he pushes it open, there is Ingrid, holding a silver lance, practicing a series of graceful lance moves. 

He waits in the doorway of the training grounds, just watching and appreciating her form for a moment: the grace of her arms as they swing and the curve of her hips and the shine of her golden hair in the moonlight that makes it look almost silver. Finally, she seems to notice that she’s being watched and she stops, turning towards him. 

She plants the end of her lance against the ground and raises an eyebrow. “Can I help you, Sylvain?”

“You know that fairytale about the Holy Knight who met the love of his life because there was that red string tied around his wrist that led him to her?”

Ingrid frowns, looking confused. “What? That’s a children’s story,” she mutters.

“Humour me,” he requests, walking towards her. 

He takes her hand in his, lifting it up so that their palms press together. Their fingers are each decorated in colours for their friends and family. Sylvain slides his fingers between hers so that they are linked solidly. 

“Would you believe me if I told you I could see my own red string?”

She looks surprised. “Sylvain,” she says. 

He smiles at her. “I didn’t need a string to tell me I was in love with you. I think I bumbled my way into figuring that out on my own, funnily enough.” 

Her green eyes are impossibly wide. “You’re what?”

“In love with you,” he answers. “I think I made myself look stupid enough when I couldn’t even call you beautiful to your face.”

Ingrid still looks absolutely gobsmacked. “Hold on,” she says, pulling her hand away and stepping away from him. “What’s going on?”

He laughs and reaches for her left hand where the green string is tied around her ring finger. “I’m trying, if you would stop running away, to ask you to marry me.”

Ingrid stares at their hands. “You’re in love with me?” she says.

“Desperately, uselessly, absolutely,” he confirms. 

She laughs, sounding a little shy and uncertain. “And here I thought Dorothea was kidding when she said my chances were better than I thought.”

A wide, stupid smile spreads across his face and he steps closer to her. She doesn’t back away this time, squeezing his hand with her own. Sylvain leans closer even and somehow, Ingrid lets him lean down and press his lips to hers. The hand that he’s not holding cups the back of his head and Sylvain wraps his arm around her waist, pulling her in even closer to him. 

When they have to break the kiss in order to breathe, Ingrid’s eyes are glittering and Sylvain falls in love with her all over again. 

“Marry me,” he says breathlessly. 

“Okay,” she replies quietly. 

* * *

Seven years later, when Sylvain’s eldest daughter takes his hand and touches the bright, unwavering green string on his finger and asks him what it means, he kisses the top of her head and tells her that it ties him to her mother because he loves her mother. 

He touches the pale blue string that connects him to his daughter and says that that means that he loves her very much too. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm SORRY ABOUT FERDIE. BUT DOROTHEA'S LINE IS JUST SO GOOD, OKAY. GOD I HAD TO.


End file.
